


Come Back When You Can

by cosipotente



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Meet-Cute, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-12 01:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7078654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosipotente/pseuds/cosipotente
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe loves laughing at Bucky.</p><p>or:</p><p>Two meet cute moments (wherein cute is relative) and the one time that Bucky finally gets Steve's name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Back When You Can

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drawthequeen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drawthequeen/gifts).



Someone behind Bucky coughs. 

It’s the dry, passive-aggressive douchebag cough of someone who has to stand in line for their coffee a little longer than they wanted to. He rolls his eyes and tries to keep himself calm by carefully picking up the folder he’d laid on the counter. Focus, he tells himself. 

Seconds later, there’s another not so subtle cough, but this time it’s followed by a low-slung, “Mind hurrying it up, dude?”

Bucky’s face burns in a mixture of frustration and embarrassment. His hand stills over his folder. He closes his eyes and slowly breathes in through his nose, holding it it momentarily before letting it out through his mouth in one, even rush.

The breathing exercise doesn’t rid Bucky of the anger coiling slow and hot in his chest. A viper’s pit, essentially. His therapist said it would only curb the sharp sting; calm him down and keep the violence at bay. It helps him focus on doing what needs to be done when civilian life presses in too close.

And right now—right now, he needs to get the hell out of the campus cafe. 

A few more breaths and he’s feeling only marginally calmer, still Bucky opens his eyes and flashes the cashier an apologetic twitch of his mouth. 

Put the folder under your arm, he thinks. Put the coffee in your hand. Get the fuck out of dodge, Barnes.

He congratulates himself on having the forethought to not take the backpack slung over his shoulder off. Getting it back on would have made this into an even bigger ordeal. Fitting the thick folder from the Administration Office under his arm is going to be tricky enough as it is. It needs to be held closed in just a way so none of the paperwork and brochures scatter across the floor. 

Bucky gets it positioned just right and is reaching for his coffee when the passive-aggressive douchebag opens his mouth again.

“Sometime today would be awesome, bro.”

Fuck it. Bucky turns around carefully. There are six people behind him in line. They avoid looking at him entirely when he sweeps his gaze over the line, eyes skittering elsewhere. Like if they avoid looking at him, he’ll go away. Bucky doesn’t snort, but only just.

No, instead he fixes his eyes further down the line; he doesn’t have to guess which one is the passive-aggressive douche. The guy openly stares at Bucky, raised eyebrow and an impatient pinch to his face. He’s no taller than Bucky himself, and he’s stocky in the same way a bulldog is. 

Bucky eyes him up and he doesn’t need a sniper’s scope to tell him a good, solid hit to the solar plexus would have the guy wheezing out an apology in no time.

Which isn’t how Bucky should be thinking; in fact, the moment the idea of hurting someone who wasn’t threatening him popped into his head, Bucky should have left. Forget the coffee. Forget the folder, if he had to.

“Just get out,” his therapist had said during their tenth, or maybe thirtieth session—sometimes it all bleeds together. Bucky had grudgingly brought up the subject of what to do if he was feeling particularly unhinged in a situation where he wasn’t being directly threatened. “Wherever you are, just leave. Don’t engage in any sort of confrontation, just get out. Call someone if you need to.”

Bucky doesn’t leave and he doesn’t reach for the cellphone in his pocket. He takes a slow, purposeful step towards the douchebag. The guy rolls his eyes at Bucky, adjusting his posture so he looks tough.

“Really, man?” Douche intones. “You’ve got one arm.” 

Bucky is going to enjoy punching the daylights out of him.

“Hey,” another voice chimes in before Bucky can open his mouth, “you wanna show some respect?”

A blond guy Bucky hadn’t noticed at the end of the line steps out from behind the douchebag. Thin comes to mind. So does little. Bucky guesses the guy barely meets the five-foot-three mark and probably weighs, at most, a buck-twenty when he’s wet.

He also seems to lack any sort of self-preservation as he gets right up in the douchebag’s face.

“You wanna get your coffee faster?” the little guy says. Bucky watches the way he white-knuckles the strap of his bag, like he’s itching to throw a punch. “Try being a decent person by offering him some help.”

The anger bleeds out of Bucky almost instantly. It isn’t that he needs someone to fight his battles for him, it’s that the scene before him is just hilarious. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing as he watches the stocky guy, his overly tanned face mottled with red, cowed by someone who is not only wearing a cardigan, but actual honest to God suspenders. Someone he could easily bend over a knee and break. 

Bucky snorts when the douchebag tucks tail and leaves the cafe altogether with nothing more than a huff.

The blond is still watching the guy leave, brows furrowed and mouth drawn into a tight line. Like he still wants to lay into the douchebag. Bucky eyes him carefully, taking note of his posture. Rigid shoulders. Thin arms tapering into closed fists. Bucky isn’t embarrassed when the word cute rolls to the front his mind. Like those puppies on Youtube that are all bark despite their size.

He’s worried he’s going to have to grab the blond by his suspenders to keep him from doing something stupid. 

This isn’t how Bucky imagined his first day on campus would go. Sure, he expected the stares, the quick double takes, and even the polite, sympathetic glances that said, “I know you don’t have an arm but I’m just going to pretend you do to make talking to you easier.” Hell, he’d steeled himself in front of his mirror for a few comments as he got dressed this morning, foregoing the neat little prosthetic the Stark Foundation supplied for vets, and opting instead to pin his shirtsleeve up like his physical therapist showed him. 

Choices have consequences and Bucky chose to go out today with one arm. The consequence of this choice: watching an overgrown dirtbag have his ass handed to him by a dude in a cardigan and glasses, is worth the slight dent in his pride.

It was unexpected, having his honor defended, but not unwelcome. (Bucky is not going to admit it has everything to do with his defender being built like a twig.)

“Thanks.” Bucky says when the little guy turns back to him. “But I had him on the ropes.” 

His baby blues light up behind his glasses and the smile that follows makes Bucky feel a little off kilter. Like being hit by particularly bright ray of sunshine. It leaves him feeling warm right down to his nerves.

Other words Bucky would use to describe him are: really stupidly cute .

“I know you did.” Baby Blues says.  
  
  
  
Bucky sort of forgets all about the incident in the student cafe after a week. 

He’d told his sisters and mom about it over dinner that weekend and they’d all laughed at him. Bucky didn’t mind too much, it was funny—hilarious, in fact—but between lectures, course work, his job in the garage, and therapy (the physical and psychological kind), it was something easily pushed to the back of his mind. A moment easily forgotten in the rush of living a life outside of the military.

It was a one off kind of event and while the Howard Stark campus wasn’t the biggest in the state, it was big enough that a second run in with the little guy seemed unlikely.  
  
  
  
  
Except the universe loves laughing at Bucky.

He’s standing in the feminine care aisle of the grocery store, phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, arguing with his sister Rebecca over the merits of super absorbency versus regular absorbency tampons. It’s been an uphill battle for five minutes and honestly, Bucky has no one to blame but himself. It’s his own fault for volunteering to do the week’s shopping like the good son he is.

“Becks,” Bucky says, “why don’t you all just go with the super?”

“One,” Rebecca replies, tone catty, “stop calling me Becks. Two, how many times are we gonna go over this, James?”

Bucky laughs. She sounds eerily like their Ma. “You know I’ve gotta give you shit about it as your big bro, right?” He says, perusing the shelves of brightly packaged feminine hygiene products. All in a day’s work of being the eldest son and a big brother trying to make up for lost time.

He can practically feel Rebecca’s eyes roll over the phone. “And you know I don’t need the supers, Frances does. I use the regular and Olivia uses the regular maxis—”

“With wings.” Bucky finishes for her. He tosses one box of the super tampons into the cart as well as a box of regulars.

“Bucky Barnes, I do believe you're going to make someone very happy in the future.” Rebecca affects a drawl. “You cook. You clean, and you can do the shopping. Just gotta do something with the mess you call your hair.”

“Ha ha. Used up your joke quota for the year.” Bucky grouses.

He eye-balls the shelves, looking for Olivia’s preferred brand of pads, while scrubbing a hand through his hair. Gone is the high-and-tight of his army days, instead, Bucky has been letting his hair grow long, chopped in chunky layers around his face. It’s just hair, he knows, but the style makes him feel free and in control.

“You should do something with the mess you call a face,” Bucky retorts. He finds the appropriate package of feminine products for Olivia and pulls it down as he speaks into his phone. His cart is about a foot away and he draws back his arm to dunk the pads into the basket.

“Besides, I like my hair. It’s fine the way it is.” Bucky shoots them towards his cart.

He misses spectacularly and the package of pads lands with a soft thud on the linoleum floor. This is where the universe laughs at Bucky Barnes. His life is a fucking laugh riot, he knows. Another shopper coming down the aisle scoops them up and Bucky’s got an apology waiting behind his teeth but it fizzles into a weird clicking sound in his mouth. Distantly, Bucky is aware of Rebecca speaking through the phone but it’s background noise for the moment.

Not exactly the same grandpa clothes but the baby blues are the same where they stare at Bucky curiously from behind the glasses perched on his nose.

The little guy from campus drops the maxis into Bucky’s cart, a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. Bucky’s assessment from two months ago changes from stupidly cute to kissably cute just like that, just from the little smile lines tucked around Baby Blue’s mouth.

When he passes Bucky, the little guy says, “It does suit you. Your hair, I mean. It suits you.”

Bucky makes some unintelligible noise in response and turns to watch Baby Blues go. 

“Oh my God, Bucky,” Rebecca’s voice is suddenly loud in his ear. “Who was that?”

He’s never ended a call so fast in his life.  
  
  
Of course, Bucky’s sisters make his life hell for the next month. 

They take it, in turns, to bring up the grocery store moment at every opportunity. He’s teased for it during dinner. At least one of them brings it up before their Saturday movie nights. Even their Ma gets in on it, in that subtle way mothers have about making sure their oldest child isn’t going to spend his life alone.

It doesn’t help matters either that his own body betrays. Bucky will be walking across campus, see someone who’s just the right shade of blond, and his heart will trip in his chest. Or he could be working some job in the garage and a customer will come through with the same easy Brooklyn accent but the features will be all wrong and Bucky will spend the rest of his work day in a funk. At least until the rest of the guys in the garage start ribbing him and then Bucky pushes all thoughts of little guys with blue eyes to the back of his mind.

(He does keep a lookout on campus though, just in case.)  
  
  
  
It’s a thunder storm that brings them within each other’s orbit again.

Bucky rushes down the stairs of the History Department building like the devil is licking at his heels. His lecture ran over by fifteen minutes which gives Bucky less than forty-five to make it on time for his shift at the garage. He calculates as his boots pound on granite steps. If he can cut across campus via the Arts Center and then haul ass toward the buses, it’ll shave off a good ten minutes. He’ll probably still be late and his boss, Dum-Dum, will be waiting to chew him out, but Bucky thinks five minutes late is better than fifteen.

He pushes out of the building, using his good shoulder to press out of the tangle of other students, and curses under his breath. Rain pelts his head in thick, fat drops. 

“Fuck you very much.” He grumbles up at the sky, and tucks his notebook into his jacket.

Bucky takes off at a sprint across the grass and, not for the first, thinks he’s too old for all of this. He isn’t, Bucky knows this, but he still can’t shake the feeling of being ancient compared to his (almost) same-age peers. He’d left his youth on a desert battlefield along with his arm.

In retrospect, it’s that line of thinking that contributes to the panic attack that drops him like a sack of bricks.

Still in a sprint, Bucky rounds on the side of the Arts Center when he hears the distant rumble of humvee engines. Fuck. The wet grass beneath his boots becomes compacted sand and then there’s an explosion of light and sound overhead. 

Bucky ducks, presses his back into the brick wall, and suddenly he’s sucked back into the war so fast he can’t catch his breath. Panic burns like a wildfire in his chest, lighting along his veins and fanning outward. Dimly, Bucky knows he’s on the Howard Stark Community College campus, that it’s simply a thunderstorm roiling above him, but knowing that doesn’t mean he can’t feel the hot, desert wind against his cheeks, rubbing his skin raw, and the tight knot of dread in his stomach. 

Goddamn it. Bucky screws his eyes shut, tries to block out the hammering of his heart behind his ribs, because he knows what comes next. It’s the blast that takes out two Army vehicles, knocks him clear off his feet as he’s sprinting between them, leaves seven dead in it’s wake.

Thunder claps above Bucky.

He sucks in shuddering breath after shuddering breath, head tucked almost between his knees, and maybe it’s minutes or maybe it’s hours but slowly Bucky comes back to reality. He’s on campus. In a fucking thunderstorm not a war zone. Get your shit together Barnes, he curses at himself, sounding vaguely like his former CO, Fury, when his bullshit quota had been filled for the day.

Bucky cracks open his eyes. People blur past, some stop to stare but ultimately continue on with their own lives. He watches them scurry along in the rain and feels wrung out. Having a flashback, how pathetic is that? He survived getting blasted to hell and back but it’s the shit in Bucky’s own head that trips him up.

He lets those thoughts finish circling the drain in his head, cycling through naturally like his therapist told him, and by the end he’s left feeling exhausted. So much so, that Bucky isn’t sure how long it takes him before he notices that while he’s soaking wet, the rain hasn’t been touching him for awhile. Huh.

From his periphery, Bucky catches movement, sees the slow shift of clothing.

“— okay.”

The little guy, Baby Blues—and of course it would be him—is talking down to Bucky. He’s holding an umbrella over both of them, but mostly Bucky. For some reason, the sight of the little guy’s shoulder getting drenched grounds Bucky into the present.

“You’re okay,” he’s saying, blue eyes steady despite the drawn line between his brows. “You’re safe.”

He hunkers down slowly beside Bucky. “I’m going to touch you, is that okay?” He’s blushing a bit as he asks but Baby Blues waits patiently for Bucky to answer.

Bucky should tell him no, that it’s all good, but he must nod or twitch in a way that invites the little guy to put his warm hand on Bucky’s shoulder and grip it with surprising strength.

“You’re alright.”

For reasons unknown, Bucky is compelled to believe him. 

Bucky’s voice decides then and there to unstick itself from the back of his throat and rather than a ‘thank you’ what comes out is, “Baby Blues, we gotta stop meeting like this.”

The little guy blushes to the tips of his ears and Bucky is finding him adorable all over again.

“Steve,” the little guy says, tugging at his ear. “My name is Steve.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to the late and terribly written meet cute college AU fic no one asked for but I'm giving it to [drawthequeen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/drawthequeen) as a birthday present anyway. I am so sorry.


End file.
